“It was imperative that I did,” Turley said. “I don't know how to explain it. It's just a moment where you're lost. You're completely gone. You don't understand the things that you're doing, you're pissed at yourself because you're doing the things that you're doing, and you have little control, it seems, over it.

“Even in the moment, you're saying, 'Why is this happening? What is going on?' But you're still in it. It's a weird thing. I don't really know how to describe it. It's frustrating to no end, and that frustration can lead you to some pretty low places. Only those who have gotten to the point where they picked up a phone can probably understand.”

There is a haunting vagueness when Turley describes such changes in mood.

He's talked about broken plates, about house repairs, about car repairs. The talks grow more personal in how it's affected the people around him.

While no such parallel could be proven, he theorizes the impulse he feels is what Seau felt, producing actions without a full grasp as to why. Despite suffering from those impulses, Turley said he doesn't prepare a safeguard by keeping a gun out of his own reach.

“I know I've got so many things going on with me,” Turley said. “At the same time, when it comes to those types of things, I don't relate to them at all. I'm a big believer in the Second Amendment. I'm still that defensive guy that's going to help. I've got my gun in my car and in my house. If I've got to protect my family, I will. … I don't think about it in those terms.”

Turley has help.

He has knowledge of where to turn. He has his family. He has Depakote, a medication that “stops me from doing a lot of things my brain wants me to do in destructive ways,” he said.

And, he has his music.

The creative outlet is catharsis, a way to pay tribute.

Seau called the people around him his “buddy.”

For Turley, he addresses each member of the NFL player community as his “brother.”

There is a Turley song from his “Death, Drugs & the DoubleCross" album called “Fortune and Pain.” At one point in the music video, the screen turns black, and in white letters read Junior Seau's name on one line, his date of birth and death on the next.